Uprising’s guest expert Rahul Mahajan, a sociologist and news analyst and author of Full Spectrum Dominance: US Power in Iraq and Beyond, analyzes today’s news headlines:

A brazen attack by militants in a Nigerian border town has resulted in as many as 300 people killed. The massacre took place at a busy market place as armed men sprayed bullets into crowds. A Nigerian official told the Associated Press that residences and storefronts were also set on fire and destroyed over a 12 hour period. The federal senator has claimed that the militant organization Boko Haram was to blame. This is the same group that has taken credit for the kidnapping of hundreds of girls and young women. Meanwhile the US and UK governments have both pledged to help the Nigerian government discover the whereabouts of the girls, even as a second kidnapping of 8 more girls aged 8 to 15 took place. Click here for a Time.com article and here for a Guardian newspaper article about the story.

Thailand’s Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has been asked to step down by a court which found her guilty of illegally transferring the nation’s national security head. There have been months of mass protests in Thai cities calling for Shinawatra’s ouster. The Thai cabinet has appointed the country’s commerce secretary as an interim Prime Minister. Shinawatra said in a statement, “We held true to the principles of honesty in running the country, and never acted corruptly, as we were accused.” Click here for a BBC article about the story.

With all the talk of leaving job creation to the private sector, it appears as though the stock market tends to reward those companies slashing the most jobs. A USA Today analysis has found that “14 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500…have methodically eliminated jobs each and every year for the past five fiscal years. And these stocks are outperforming the market both in the short term and long term.” The report pointed out an example of how Office Depot’s share prices skyrocketed as soon as it announced it would shut down hundreds of stores. Click here for a USA Today article about the story.

Comments Off on Daily News Flash with Rahul Mahajan on Nigerian Attack and Kidnapping, Thai PM Ouster, and the Fallacy of Corporate Job Creation

Yanis Varoufakis of the Syriza Party took the European political establishment by storm a year ago when he was appointed Finance Minister of Greece by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Varoufakis is an ……